Bloc Party

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Bloc Party are a British rock band formed in 2003. They're often stuck on the indie label, mainly due to their first album, Silent Alarm, being weighed amongst other indie albums of the time. However, with the second and third albums they have branched into a more electronic-sound while still maintaining some elements of indie rock.

The band consists of:

  • Kele Okereke- Lead vocals, rhythm guitar
  • Russell Lissack - Lead guitar
  • Gordon Moakes - Bass, synths
  • Matt Tong - Drums

Their three albums are:

  • Silent Alarm (2005)
  • A Weekend in the City (2007)
  • Intimacy (2009)

They also released two EPs in 2004 prior to Silent Alarm; Bloc Party, and Little Thoughts.

Currently on hiatus as of 2009; the band have temporarily split, with 3 out of 4 doing separate projects; Kele released his solo album The Boxer in 2010, Russell teamed up with Milena Mepris of Black Moustache to form Pin Me Down, and Gordon Moakes joined Young Legionnaire with Paul Mullen of The Automatic fame.

Bloc Party provides examples of the following tropes:
  • Animated Music Video: The band love these.
  • Breakup Song: Like Eating Glass.
    • Intimacy is a goldmine of these, being written after a bad breakup of Kele's.
    • Also, the b-side We Were Lovers.
  • B-Side: The band have released loads of these; probably as much as their studio material (if you count the EPs), to the point where 'fake' albums comprised entirely of Bloc Party b-sides (such as 'Another Weekend in the City') began to appear on torrent sites. Or So I Heard.
  • Cain and Abel: Played with in 'Cain Said to Abel'.
  • Concept Album: A Weekend in the City - an album of snapshots of different people in London.
  • Crapsack World: The general overarching theme of A Weekend in the City.
  • Creator Breakdown: The angst of Intimacy was inspired by a particularly bad breakup of Kele's, as well as several deaths of those around him.
  • Darker and Edgier: While Silent Alarm was hardly a light album in terms of lyrical content, the second and third albums delve into much darker topics such as drug use, suicide, and deaths of loved ones.
  • Driven to Suicide: SRXT.
  • Epic Riff: I Still Remember.
    • "Helicopter".
  • Even the Guys Want Him: Kele. Oh yes.
  • Watch It Stoned While the song On doesn't promote cocaine, it does try to explain its appeal from a first person perspective.
  • Hearing Voices: She's Hearing Voices.
  • Hidden Track: Every Time Is The Last Time, a hidden track on the 13-track versions of Silent Alarm.
  • Keep Circulating the Tapes: Their b-sides are ridiculously hard to acquire legally, as many of them are bonus tracks on Japanese-only editions, 7" LPs, or EPs that are no longer in print.
  • Love Nostalgia Song: I Still Remember, about a childhood crush from another boy towards another.
  • Lyrical Dissonance: Their dancier songs such as One More Chance and Flux are about failed/failing relationships.
  • New Sound Album: Bloc Party's debut album Silent Alarm was well received and known for its heavy use of guitars and was generally considered an example of an excellent indie album. As the band's career progressed they released A Weekend in the City and Intimacy, two albums with increasingly dancier music and less emphasis on guitars and other standard indie fare.
    • For example, with Intimacy, Ares and Mercury are a complete departure from Silent Alarm, but by the third track, Halo, the guitars return and we're reminded of their early stuff.
    • "The Prayer" from A Weekend In The City was at least partly inspired by the cheerleader handclap intro to the video for the Daft Punk-sampling Busta Rhymes song "Touch It".
  • Precision F-Strike: Positive Tension. The music builds and builds and then stops for just long enough for him to yell, "So fucking useless."
  • Post Punk
  • Punny Name: was named from the term block party, a large public party where everyone in a neighbourhood gets together. Extra punny given that a bloc is "a group of persons, businesses, etc., united for a particular purpose", often centered around politics (which is also true of some of Bloc Party's lyrics).
  • Reclusive Artist: The band, particularly Kele, are known for their shyness in interviews. Kele especially is quiet and reluctant to talk about anything but his music, despite having a very confident stage persona.
  • Sanity Slippage Song: She's Hearing Voices is about a girl suffering from bipolar disorder.
  • Shirtless Scene: The video for 'Talons' has scenes of Kele running through a building with his shirt off.
  • Sitting on the Roof: Lyrics from 'Hunting for Witches'. 'Sitting on the roof of my house with a shotgun and a sixpack of beer', used to illustrate the fear stirred up by the media after the 7/7 bombings.
  • What Do You Mean It's Not Political??: Helicopter, containing lyrics such as 'stop being so American' and 'just like his dad' is frequently misinterpreted as being critical of George W Bush and/or the American way of life.
    • "Hunting For Witches", meanwhile, is a critical portrait of a paranoid, reactionary Daily Mail reader.
  • Wham! Line: "Because I love my mind when I'm fucking you." - Ion Square.
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